Using Melodyne on vocals with some piano bleed over

[T Boog]

  I normally use headphones for recording my vocals (of course) but I really hate using them. I recently recorded one of my songs that's just midi piano and vocal and I decided to ditch the headphones. First I recorded the piano track and then I played it back at fairly low volume thru my monitors and recorded the vocal track. 

I have a 57 dynamic mic but I decided to just try my condenser mic and see how it turned out. Of course it was okay but the real question was gonna be, "could I still apply a little Melodyne to the vocal without it causing noticable wonkyiness in the final mix?" 

The result...  When the vocal is soloed, u can hear the bled over piano go out of tune in the parts wear I applied Melodyne. However, when the piano track is added in, it sounds perfect. Those little pitch anomalies are undetectable and there's no noticeable freq cancelations either. It sounds beautiful and radio ready.

I was just curious what others here think of this. I did ask Google since it's the authority on everything 😉 and it said...

"Positive perspective: If the final product sounds good to you, and the pitch correction doesn't introduce unwanted artifacts or detract from the performance, then it's perfectly fine."

I'm a recovering perfectionist so I encourage myself to fight against my perfectionism. Also, I follow the Eddie Van Halen theory that if it sounds good, it IS good. I think it's mainly about the quality of the song anyway so I'm rolling with it. 

But I'm just curious what u guys think about this. Is it just the overall final sound that matters or should I be excommunicated for breaking a home recording cardinal rule?  🤣

[Amberwolf]

All I ever care about is how it sounds in the mix, since my goal is the end-result as a whole; I'm creating a soundscape and if all the bits fit, well...that's it.

 

I have done some absolutely awful abusive edits to pieces of audio I've created or gotten from other places, in order to fit them into the spot in the track I want them in, because for whatever reason I couldn't just rerecord that bit (sound source unavailable or unmodifiable, etc).    Some of them sound quite tragic on their own. 😆 

But in the mix, I can't even tell there *was* an edit...or the edit sounds like it was supposed to be that way, and whatever couple of listeners I can scrape up to give me any feedback never say anything seemed wierd or bad in there.  

So....if it works, it works.  

 

 

But I have like...zero fans that come back to keep listening to my stuff, so I'm probably not the one to take advice from.  😊

 

 

Edited 12 hours ago by Amberwolf

[treesha]

If it blends in and sounds good that’s the main thing. I’m wondering why when you melodyned the vocal/low piano track, assuming that’s what you did, why didn’t you tune the piano when you tuned the vocals? 

[mettelus]

+1 to the end product is what matters. Frequency masking is your friend in that case, as the louder (original) piano track will get more focus by the listener. Another thing you can try in a track bleed scenario is make a copy of that piano track, phase invert it, and knock the gain down to match the bleed part on the vocal track. That should cancel out most of the bleed (may need to adjust timing on it a smidge), then you can bounce both those 2 tracks to a new one and use Melodyne as previously.